You want to be clinically depressed? Read this!

[kinetic]

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General internists make around 100K (let's say 100K-120K).

There's a Pharmacist thread where they are talking about making 85K working at Rite Aide and >100K working at CVS. Now, yes, it's got to stink to tell someone you work at CVS, but if you follow it with "...for >100K", that's not half bad. (Also, no malpractice.)

 

[rory1215]

Yeah, that's depressing. No wonder few people want to go into primary care anymore with that kind of compensation plus malpractice payments.

It's sad, too, because we need good generalists. But with things the way they are, our best and brightest will continue to move away from the front lines of medicine. And for others considering a career in healthcare, why not choose a career in pharmacy? Similar if not equal money, fewer hours, fewer responsibilities, etc.

I think one way that healthcare will need to be improved is to make the system such that primary care physicians will be compensated more. It's an incredibly complex problem, though. No easy answers...

 

[kinetic]

At CVS (or Rite Aide).

 

[rory1215]

At CVS (or Rite Aide).

Same thing

 

[dochubert]

What is so bad about telling people you work at CVS or Rite-Aide? My wife got her PharmD and has been working for CVS for over a year now. She is very happy with her job and gets a great deal of satisfaction from being able to help patients with questions that either their doctor did not have the time to go over or that their doctor just did not know. As a future IM physician, I am always amazed at the amount of material that Pharmacists actually know and put to use on a daily basis - ie determining correct renal dosing for a patient who has renal failure, checking interactions among all the drugs a patient is taking. I know that as a physician, these are things I will be expected to do, but it is nice to know that I have some bright people checking my prescriptions making sure I don't screw up....

I am sure you did not mean to put down those who chose to work in retail pharmacies, but I thought I should take the opportunity to put a plug in for those guys.

 

[Pilot]

Actually, the smarter pharmacists go ahead and get malpractice insurance. Costs $176 per year for $3 million/$6 million. I used to ask my interns if they really thought Walgreens would defend them in court, or use them as the scapegoat. Consensus was we would be the scapegoat, and I would rather have an attorney sitting beside me representing me instead of Walgreens (or whatever chain name you would care to insert).